


not the last

by charcoalsuns



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Established/Developing Relationship, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-13 17:26:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9134035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charcoalsuns/pseuds/charcoalsuns
Summary: December 31: a simple walk on a simple night, and trusting in more to come.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was saved as 'BIRTHDAYFIC but lowkey' before I figured out a 'proper title.' It turned out rather longer than I initially intended; I hope its sentiment carries through! 
> 
> (Thank you to Vienna Teng and her always breath-holding work -- this first came to mind via "The Last Snowfall")

 

A few evenings after Christmas, during the days they're both on holiday, Ikejiri glances away from the pair of new, warm gloves on his desk, picks up his phone, and types out a question.

_are you busy sunday night?_

He looks back over the short line of text – once, just once – and closes his eyes briefly to the familiar second thoughts that swell between his temples, quiet and cacophonous in unblinking turns; insistent, but not beyond his ability to ignore them.

 _Message sent_.

It's an ability he has acknowledged in himself since he was young, to recognize his uncertainties for what they are – _uncertainties_ , nothing more than _what if_ , mere falterings of his steps forward as he remembers what someone else might think, might do in his place. To recognize them, and then to plow on, regardless.

Although, he supposes, he wouldn't quite call it _regardless_ , either; those he learns from, he holds in high regard, not in a way where he strains his neck in looking up, but where he can glance over to them, like he does now, again, to the gloves on his desk, and where he can feel the fact of the ground, steady beneath his own feet.

_not as of now_

On the other hand, of course, there is something to be said for the momentary disarming of his pulse, a swoop like falling, like catching himself on an edge, even as his body betrays no movement save the nudge at the corner of his mouth. He unlocks his phone before its screen shuts off, passing under the faceless, default caller ID image to bring up the keyboard in response. The words come as simply as they have been for years, even when they had no real outlet or destination, and carried only the fond, fleeting memories of places _with_ faces, of old routines and people he was lucky enough to know.

Still, now, his phone's memory is largely unused. Only a handful of photographs, only flyers and business cards for reference; none featuring the people whose faces he remembers without prompting, from the last time he met them, from the times and times before that. It's less that he doesn't think to preserve moments where his own memory might not – more that he stands too definitely within each moment as it comes, within each current as it swirls at his ankles, and past and future moments are enough to think of when his attention isn't occupied by the present, anyway.

Ikejiri trusts where he stands, and that, in all its shifts and stumbles, is why he knows how to glance from his path without losing his footing. It is why he knows, a little more each time, that his second thoughts are worth a second's consideration, and that whatever he might choose to do, whatever reply he might find stepping outward, it will take him to a place worth remembering, all the same.

_would you want to meet up?  
around 8, by the twin stones in the park _

A minute later, he can feel the quiet chuckle in the buzz of his phone against the desk:

_shouldn't you wait for a 'yes' before giving  
me the time and place _

And he knows well the way that blunt grin will soften, as though its face cannot hold stone for long before it feels the urge to skip, instead:

_but yes  
I would _

The arc in his chest is a little less new each time, but the ripples it leaves behind, one upon the next, resonating gently, transiently, across his stream of consciousness to meet the memories that anchor him to _now_ , to _tomorrow_ , to _Sunday_ – those are as warm as coat pockets on a midwinter evening, and the expressions that lift to see them unused.

_okay then_

And, on a second thought:

_:)_

 

  
 

// 

 

 

 

Five minutes till the hour, by the backlit clockface overlooking two stones that are taller than them both, Ikejiri rounds a brick-laid corner, passes an empty, frostbitten flowerbed, and, through a smile, calls out a question.

"How early did you get here?"

Sawamura must have heard his footsteps coming, though he only turns from his phone now, stowing it in his jacket pocket as he looks up— and those few degrees higher, as if to bare his jaw that slightest distance between them, and Ikejiri has delighted in this for as long as he's felt comfortable in doing so, for as long as he's had fun poked at him in turn.

It's always depended on a handful of things: the millimeters granted by the soles of their shoes, the slope of the ground, the way they hold themselves upright on the given day, at the given time.

Tonight, they stand more or less eye-to-eye, which is fitting, Ikejiri thinks, when he hears, "Not even a minute earlier than you," and doesn't bother to brace himself against the accompanying knock to his shoulder.

He doesn't even stumble. For his own part, Sawamura's fingers uncurl after his strike connects; the fabric of his glove rustles like blankets in the morning, like hair across a pillowcase, Ikejiri's hair across his palm when he reaches up, thumb just behind one uncovered ear, and settles, several heartbeats strong, beneath the lined collar of his coat, between his leaping skin and the scarf looped snug around his neck.

As one, their breaths take pause from their overlapping clouds, and the look on Sawamura's face is one Ikejiri remembers again – and again, and again, clearer than a photograph, kept each time within a muted slideshow of places they've shared and are sharing, still. He's doing the thing where it seems, from up close, that he's counting freckles and speckles and miniscule scars, as if six days and little sun would have caused them to move or multiply; but this is a thing Ikejiri knows as well as the hidden give in his moments of acting stern, as well as the impermanent lines across the strength of his hands – he's just doing the thing where it's impossible to look someone in both eyes at once, and Ikejiri is doing it right back.

Soon enough, they've looked enough, and because they know without saying that they'll have the rest of the night, the year, to turn toward each other again: Sawamura puts his hands back in his pockets, Ikejiri tucks his hands in his own, and they walk out from the lamplit base of two giant stones, past the solemnly chiming clock, and down a path, any path, to wherever they might find another light.

"Did you eat yet?" Sawamura asks, stepping over a patch of clover that springs from a gap between bricks.

"Yeah," says Ikejiri, and laughs to himself at the minor grief this had caused him not an hour earlier. "Wasn't sure if any of our usual places would be open, and I figured you'd have eaten already, you punctual monster."

"Ah, shut up." But the humor in his cheeks says otherwise, and Ikejiri grins, half-unseen behind the ribbed folds of his scarf. "I like having a routine," Sawamura continues, typical surety in his tone belying the cross, childish air he pulls on. "And I'm breaking it tonight, you know."

Ikejiri does. He does. He knows this voice, its focus, its certainties, straightforward as the course forged on ahead. He trusts where he stands, and it is why he knows how to hear _for you_ and _for this_ and _because I want to_ in the smile-worn creases at the edges of these eyes; it is why he glances over to see them, just as he shifts his fingers against the warm, practical fleece that lines his gloves; it is why he says, "I know," and, "We're not going to go anywhere too out of the ordinary, anyway."

Sawamura laughs, a buzz in his throat that Ikejiri cannot feel. Still, there is the answering beat in his own chest, the way they step into each other's space at a fork in the path, each angling toward the other one without really thinking about it, and there is the second it takes to share a quiet snort, a jostle, a whim of a decision that finds them going the same direction again.

"Well," Sawamura says, "Do we ever?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

When they run out of turns to choose from – except the one that would take them back where they came, the one they don't tend to consider a choice at all – they walk through the open arch at the north entrance of the park, where pavestones give way to pavement and the lampposts begin to curve in their vigil over the still-busy streets.

Ordinarily, every passing city stranger seems to be heading in a different direction, each moving with their own degree of purpose, their own destination, none of whom cross paths for more than an apology's glance, or beyond the slightest, unnoticed step to one side to avoid contact with another's presence. But tonight, as if to gather every apology, every step from every day before, it seems that all around the city are people making their way to the same places, their smiles coming easier than any accident, their well-wishes more sincere than daily courtesy.

There are lights strung through the bare tree branches, too, twinkling, closer than stars. Ikejiri scrunches his nose a few times to make sure he can still feel it attached where it should be, and basks in the sound of lifted spirits that has not been _polite_ for years, has not been hoarded for the entirety of this one, by either of them.

"Am I going to have to get you a muffler, next?" True to form, Sawamura hasn't gotten himself a new coat since the mixup at the laundromat three years prior, or a coat, ever, probably. His only concession to the wind chill remains a pair of gloves, and on occasion, a second pair of socks, and Ikejiri, bones rattling within their layers that never manage to feel right for any kind of weather, can only make a face in response.

He can't actually tell whether his nose is still scrunched up when he does, but both the glow of the streetlights on Sawamura's teeth and the way he ducks his head despite the people walking around them tell Ikejiri that it is, among other amusements. "If I say yes, does that mean you're looking for one, too?"

His laughter is still visible in the easy tilt of his mouth, but Sawamura takes a second to consider it – because he always does, even when his answer turns out to be, "No, I'm good," even when a subtle, pleased change spreads across that familiar grin, an unvoiced surprise like he could never come to expect anyone to remember their shared and not-even-distant past.

He should know better, really.

Ikejiri loosens a hand from its pocket burrow and nudges the side of Sawamura's arm with his elbow. "By the way," he says as he turns to him, freeing his entire smile from the shelter of his scarf, "Happy birthday."

Somehow, though Ikejiri knows he couldn't have forgotten the day, Sawamura looks a bit struck to hear him acknowledge it. His eyes have gone wide, another passing frame in the path behind them, as if he's only just registered Ikejiri's presence before him.

It's almost understandable, Ikejiri thinks, when he considers the circumstances that have suffused through their meetings until they were less circumstance and more conscious choice, when he retraces their footsteps that have been brought to light and rearranged like days of unseasonable weather. If everything from their first spring were a marathon, they are even now the split time of half a conversation in one city, a bus ride away from home; of a new one, later, in another city even further by train; then more, different, adding on to the sum of the last, yet each time feeling like they'd picked up where they left themselves separate – until even before they planned for any sort of continuation, any intentional reach for contact, their brief backward glances and confident sendoffs and nods of _again, soon_ had all settled into place as the foundation of the _yes; I would; I know_ they can trust in today.

But just because they _can_ doesn't mean they unflinchingly do, so Ikejiri thinks he can understand, when Sawamura turns his face away, ahead, and doesn't press back where their arms in their sleeves are still connected as they walk.

He has always recovered quickly, though, and this time is no exception. What is: he keeps his line of sight level with the ground, so that when he does turn to meet Ikejiri's eyes, he has to flick upward as well as between, each blink another second's tick around them. "Thank you," he says, at last, and for all that Ikejiri knows this voice, he thinks he has never heard it so soft.

There is room enough in Ikejiri's coat pocket for both of their hands, gloves included; they figure out the question of placement as they pass an open _izakaya_ and its lantern-lit menu of specials, settle palm to palm as they sidestep a group of unfamiliar people with cameras and brochures and highlighted routes on their maps. After a short, contained scuffle that ends with Sawamura's fingers alternating through his own, Ikejiri comes to a realization that had probably occurred just a few minutes before, while he'd been wondering at Sawamura's response to his unplanned, lighthearted wish for _happiness_.

He could take his phone from his other pocket now, could open up the camera screen and touch his thumb to a live image of the two of them, together. He could flip to the other lens, take a step away, and finally add a personal photograph to identify one of his most important contacts. He could do either of these now; he could even ask for a photo to be sent to him, instead, but the reason he doesn't, the reason he hasn't—

He's been telling himself _next time_ for as long as he's known what it means to have another chance. Another step, another sprint, another serendipitous meeting under lights that burn incandescent or illuminate a strange pair of stones in a park, or that twinkle like stars pulled down to drape along a promenade, to frame a window beside a sleepless street.

Another day, another night.

It is a bit of a frightening thing to believe in _next time_ when it asks someone else to believe in it, too. It is a series of trials, of tries, of new reminders to close apartment windows and old ones to open minds toward the slightest possibilities. It is spending time like it grows on the most precious of trees, and it is, they find, both easier and more difficult to build upon a slideshow of memories when its frames are shared with another person.

And here, as stupidly sure as their footing in the sands and currents around them – here lives the faith that each of them holds in his hand, for another smile, another second, another place worth remembering.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They're several dozen turns further and two cans of tea warmer when Sawamura's phone comes to attention with a text. The notification is muffled slightly by the faded fabric of his jeans, but if anything, that imperfect sound is even more familiar than its unimpeded, default chime.

"It's from Suga," he tells Ikejiri, letting out a puff of laughter as he reads.

 _happy birthday, old man_ , Sugawara has written, and Ikejiri can feel the comfortable jibe in his words as though he were walking on Sawamura's other side, digging a celebratory punch into both their ribs through the transitive property of affection.

"He's six and a half months older than I am," Sawamura mutters, catching Ikejiri's eyes when he rolls his own, though his fond amusement is still tangible through the solid press of his arm, and though he tilts his phone back toward himself without a second thought, his other hand ready to type a reply back. "Trust him to text me at the exact time every year, just to make fun."

In the stillness that follows, Ikejiri opens his senses to the continued movement around them, to the strangers and storefronts that filter in more noticeably than they had before, all without him needing to adjust. The streets they're on are more crowded, now; it's probably getting closer to midnight. He scrunches his nose as he inhales, sharp, quick, in an attempt to clear it – this time, it goes without comment, and as he tightens his fingers lightly between Sawamura's to draw him around a person walking the other way, he wonders if he's ever remembered what time his own birth had been documented; if any of them, jokes aside, would treat their own as anything more than a simple fact of a single second.

"So," he wonders aloud, "Do you feel any different?"

Sawamura presses _send_ like it's a punctuation mark, and inhales, intent, measured, in his evaluation of the question at hand. "No," he says. "Not really."

"That was fast," Ikejiri says, grinning over his scarf at him.

"Well," Sawamura huffs, "It's, you know— It's like a timestamp, right?" Ikejiri watches his eyes in profile as the brows above them furrow, just the smallest amount to herald his clear, forthright honesty that inspires people to listen. "I'm older now, sure," he says, "but I'm also older _now_ , and so is Suga, for that matter. So are you, and everyone else we know and don't. _We're_ older, too, with each day forward, and trying to keep track of all of that like every date's an appointment instead of a reminder… There are other ways that I can measure _feeling different_."

Ikejiri hums, lifting his gaze to the pedestrian traffic light above the opposite street corner. "Relatively speaking, huh," he says, contentment blooming in his chest, a gentle hope to match their faith, because he understands the nature of the ground where Sawamura steadies his feet, where he has found his own place, as well.

And because they also understand how it feels to keep traces of the earth in the lining of their shoes, Sawamura lets out another laugh, nods, "Yeah," and tugs Ikejiri a little closer before they cross.

 

 

 

It's been a while since either of them have said, _It's been a while_ , and paused to consider how long _a while_ even meant. Ikejiri considers it now. He cannot flip back his calendar pages and point to the day it changed for them, nor, he knows, with a touch of marveling humor, can Sawamura. But even so, there are moments they can mark, if after rather than before; there are spaces that stretch onward in unwalked paths, in what has yet to come.

The new year is approaching, by the time counting up across the lock screens of their phones, around the clocks visible from the rustling, living streets. In Ikejiri's pocket, their hands are warm in their gloves, and warm around each other's, and for another while longer, he can turn his head just to see a smile, just to look forward to a next one.

After all, they have time, and just because they don't feel any different tonight – it doesn't mean they aren't.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> (Then, of course, the following day is Asahi's birthday, which melts my heart to know ;_; I like to imagine that years down the line, he, Daichi, Suga, and Kiyoko might continue to keep a tradition of making their first shrine visit of the new year together...)
> 
> Wishing a happy birthday to Daichi, and especially a happy new year to you! Thank you very much for reading <3


End file.
